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Monday, April 15, 2013

Who's On Top: Movies

Biographies of great athletes can be roughly sorted into three
categories. There are hero-worshiping fables suitable for fourth-grade
classrooms, scandalous feet-of-clay exposés and, rarest of all,
narratives that link sports with significant, nonathletic historical
events and social issues. In America those events and issues almost
always have to do with race, which makes the life of Jackie Robinson
especially ripe for sweeping, comprehensive treatment. But while “42,”
Brian Helgeland’s new film about Robinson, gestures toward the
complicated and painful history in which its subject was embroiled, it
belongs, like most sports biopics, in the first category. It is blunt,
simple and sentimental, using time-tested methods to teach a clear and
rousing lesson. — A. O. Scott